Maria Janion (24 December 1926 – 23 August 2020) was a Polish scholar, literary theorist and critic, as well as a feminist. She was a professor at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences, specialising in literary Romanticism. Janion was also a member of the Polish Academy of Learning. She held an honorary degree from Gdańsk University. Life and career She was born on 24 December 1926 in Mońki, Second Polish Republic, to father Cyprian Janion and mother Ludwika (née Kurdyk). Until 1945 she resided in Vilnius, where she graduated from secondary school and spent the years of the Second World War. She was a member of the Polish Scouting and Guiding Association (Polish: , ZHP), which was affiliated with the Home Army, and worked as a liaison officer. After the war, she and her family moved to Bydgoszcz as a result of the postwar population transfers. In 1945, she passed the Matura high school leaving exam in Toruń. She studied Polish studies at the University of Łódź. Since 1946, she attended a literary criticism course run by Stefan Żółkiewski of the weekly magazine. In 1947, she started to publish her own articles and reviews and joined the Academic Union of Youth Struggle "Life". In 1948, she became a member of the editorial staff of the ("Countryside") weekly. In 1948, she was employed at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences where she worked until her retirement in 1996. Between the years 1948 and 1978 she was an active member of the Polish United Workers' Party. In 1951, she obtained a master's degree from the University of Warsaw. In 1957, she started to work at the Higher Pedagogical School in Gdańsk (WSP). In 1968, she was appointed head of the Department of History of 19th-Century Literature. After the events of March 1968, she was dismissed from her position at the WSP as the communist authorities were concerned about her growing influence on the university students. Her lectures placed emphasis on revolutionary and libertarian aspects of Romanticism which did not adhere to the official and generally accepted interpretation of the literary canon and encouraged her students to adopt a bold, defiant and original perspective on Polish literature. After the establishment of the University of Gdańsk, she began to work at the Faculty of Polish Philology. In 1970 Janion joined secret societies aimed against